


Love Me Because Nothing Happens

by alestar



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2809100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alestar/pseuds/alestar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The Groucho Marx line that Hawkeye quotes is from the Marx Bros film <i>Go West</i> (1940).  Also there is a Sophia Hawthorne quote that appears for no reason.  </p>
<p>To tjs_whatnot: happy holidays!!  I totally failed in the epistolary department and even had the absence of letters be a plot point, and there's very little Radar, but I hope you like it anyway.  Also, I marked this as gen rather than m/m, but you should feel free to <i>interpret</i>.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Love Me Because Nothing Happens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tjs_whatnot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjs_whatnot/gifts).



> The Groucho Marx line that Hawkeye quotes is from the Marx Bros film _Go West_ (1940). Also there is a Sophia Hawthorne quote that appears for no reason. 
> 
> To tjs_whatnot: happy holidays!! I totally failed in the epistolary department and even had the absence of letters be a plot point, and there's very little Radar, but I hope you like it anyway. Also, I marked this as gen rather than m/m, but you should feel free to _interpret_.

 

> I confess I meant to grow wings and lose my mind  
>  I confess that I've forgotten what for  
>  Why wings and a lost mind  
>  Love me because nothing happens 
> 
> \-- Leonard Cohen, "A Cross Didn't Fall on Me"

 

Hawkeye was good with his hands and he knew his stuff-- he hadn't slept through med school-- but what made him a great surgeon was the storehouse in his mind of perfect snapshot visions of how things  _should_  be.  On zero hours of sleep he could gaze into an open thoracic cavity and recognize every misplaced object.  He sweated and railed and cursed until the scene under his hands matched his vision; when it didn't happen, when it failed to happen, hour after hour, day after day, he tossed and turned, he drank.

 

*

 

The reunion came and went.  It was hosted at the home of Corporal Ed Mozell, who had been at the 4077th for the whole Korean War, who BJ didn't know very well but who had gotten everyone's contact information from his sister, a clerk in Veterans' Affairs.  The home was a small ranch in Oregon, even though the small plank of wood propped up on the head picnic table said INDIANAPOLIS. 

"It was my father-in-law's place," Ed explained.  "He got sick, and I was tired of living in the city.  Got used to open spaces, y'know?"  He laughed.

Also on the head picnic table were a photograph of Col. Henry Blake and a letter of apology from the absent Father Mulcahy. 

BJ took his family around the yard and introduced or reintroduced them to everyone.  The nurses-- who now looked just like wives and mothers-- cooed over Erin and lovingly touched Peg's swollen belly. 

He even took them to meet Frank Burns, whose face was a strange play of emotions during their whole conversation.  He smiled and shook Peg's hand, and then he looked from BJ to Peg to Radar, who held Erin hefted in his arms.  He dug his hands deep into the pockets of his khakis. 

"Where's Pierce?" he asked gruffly.

BJ shrugged.  "You were right, Frank, the whole time."  He caught Radar's eye.  "He was a Communist.  He defected."

Radar's grin was wide and relieved, and he tilted his head into Erin's nest of hair.  His relief was for old times in new days.

"You guys," Frank said, irritated, but with some nostalgia himself. 

After some milling about on the lawn, the twenty or thirty people that were gathered at the ranch sat down at the scattered picnic tables to eat.  American classics were served: fried chicken, noodle salad, potato salad, corn on the cob.  A honky-tonk record played from the porch. 

Ed made toasts to old friends, to a generous God, to his family and to the American fighting forces, then anecdotes were told up and down the table.  Every story told in BJ's vicinity involved Hawkeye; it might've been because  _those_  were the people who chose to sit near him, those nurses and yeomen who had stories about Hawkeye-- but BJ suspected it was everyone.  Occasionally the stories ended with a happy tilt of the head and the question, "Where  _is_  Hawkeye?" 

BJ would grin and say, "Peeking into showers up and down the Eastern Seaboard," or "I heard he was arrested for knocking over the President's latrine-- isn't that what you heard?" 

BJ's eyes would flicker to Colonel Potter-- Sherman Potter, now, in jeans and a button-up flannel, sitting next to Mrs. Potter, who looked exactly like the grandmother BJ had always imagined, with a round face beneath a wide-brimmed sunhat.  Colonel Potter would lean into his lemonade, eyes lowered, like he was too polite to point out something obvious. 

 

*

 

The eyes were wetter at the end of that day than they had been for any of the departures during the War and right after the War.  Some were leaving friends, this time without the cauterizing impatience to escape, and some were discovering that that whole life was really over-- that all they'd had in common with their old friends was trauma.  

Peg was packing Erin into the car when BJ found the Colonel standing on the side yard, looking into the distance.  Most people had left, a few others had retired to the den to pour over photographs, Frank was passed out in a guest bedroom from drinking too much, and Mrs. Potter was fussing over Radar and his girlfriend.  The sun was setting.

Ed's house overlooked a long lawn of hills covered with an apparently endless crosshatch of white fences.  The ground wasn't unlike the ground in South Korea, just more neatly trimmed-- half-green and half-brown, sparse in patches, jungle-like in others, caulked to the giant sky with a gold outline of hills.

The retired colonel turned his head as BJ approached, and he held up his glass in a salute, smiling wistfully.  BJ held up his own glass.  They'd already said their goodbyes.

"Beautiful sight," said Colonel Potter, looking back at the vista.

"It sure is," said BJ.  "Only wish Hawkeye were here to see it."

Colonel Potter nodded. 

BJ tipped his head down and said, "Have you heard from him?" 

"In a way," said the Colonel.  "No letter returned, no letter answered.  He's dealing with war in his own way, son.  Everyone does."

BJ frowned.  He'd written six letters to Hawkeye's home in Crabapple Cove, running the short gamut from glib to angry, and left three messages by phone with a voice he didn't recognize. 

"Forgive me, Colonel, but I don't remember Hawkeye ever  _dealing_  with war." 

The colonel huffed a laugh, but he didn't say anything.  They stood in silence, side by side, watching the shuffle of cattle below as the corona of sunset expanded.  A short distance away, BJ's wife and daughter were waiting in the car for BJ to drive them all to the motel in Paisley before the 8-hour drive back to California, to BJ's family practice and their dog Buster.

BJ didn't want to ruin the pleasance of the yard: the setting sun, the hazy picnic afterglow. 

But after a long moment, he said, "It's not like you to write off a casualty, sir."

"No, it's not," said the colonel.  He finally lifted his head from the valley to look at BJ with a dark expression.  He lifted his lemonade in another salute.  "You go get 'im."

 

*

 

BJ had always pictured the house in Crabapple Cove as something bright and ostentatious, a tall Dutch building next to a lighthouse, maybe, a house on top of a hill-- but the real thing was quiet.  It was a small square house, pale blue with a grey gable roof, with a gravel driveway in a narrow piece of yard, flanked by larger houses.  Behind it was a long flat stretch of snow-covered ground leading to the ocean. 

Hawkeye had grown up somewhere else-- a red house, was all BJ knew, surrounded by trees-- but he and his father had moved into a smaller place after Hawkeye's mother had died.  Hawkeye called the new place their summer cottage even though they lived there year-round.  Hawkeye's descriptions of things were always peppered with hyperboles and inside jokes, and the only way to ever know the truth was to piece together details over weeks, months, years. 

The truck rolled to a stop at the mouth of the driveway, and BJ thanked the driver for giving him a lift. 

He followed stone steps up onto a covered porch with a white railing.  The porch was crowded with chairs, and next to one was a makeshift table-- a battered lobster trap turned on its side-- holding an ash tray and the burnt stump of a cigar.  Hanging off the railing were containers of purple winter cabbage, and there were healthy-looking evergreen shrubs planted around the base of the house.  BJ wondered who the gardener was.  He couldn't imagine Hawkeye having the patience or the stamina for solitude that yardwork required.

BJ knocked on the front door, and an older man answered.

"Hello," said BJ, smiling.  "Can Hawkeye come out and play?"

The man looked at BJ for a moment-- perhaps noting the toothy grin, the moustache, the look of uneasiness covered over by good humor. 

"You'd be BJ Hunnicutt," he said, finally.

BJ extended his hand.  "Mr. Pierce," he said.

"Dr. Pierce," corrected Hawkeye's father, who was lean with deep-set eyes, like his son.  He took BJ's hand.  "Call me Dan."

"Thanks. I think we've spoken."

"We have, in fact, spoken."  Dr. Pierce stepped out of the doorway and said, "Come in."  He didn't smile, but he seemed calm and solid; it was a sharp contrast to Hawkeye, who bounced with alarming speed between boisterous mania, irritable restlessness, moody silence. 

"You can put your things in the guest room," he said, nodding at BJ's duffel bag, and BJ felt suddenly more awkward than he'd expected to feel, standing with luggage in a stranger's house. 

"I planned to get a room in town--"

Dr. Pierce shook his head.  "Not necessary."  He showed BJ to a small bedroom; he walked to the window and spread open the curtains, revealing a clear view of the ocean and a long grey afternoon sky.  "Hawkeye's room is the next door, bathroom's across the hall."

 

*

 

Dr. Pierce made some coffee, and they drank it sitting in the living room.  He asked BJ about his family and his practice; he seemed to already know a lot about BJ's life-- things, even, that BJ had mentioned in letters to Hawkeye after the war, letters Hawkeye had never answered but had, it seemed, thoroughly read.  They talked pleasantly for an hour, and neither of them mentioned Hawkeye until BJ finally sat down his cup and said, "So how is he?"

Dr. Piece gazed at BJ over the rim of his coffee cup and nodded slowly but didn't say anything.  It reminded BJ of Colonel Potter.  BJ smiled politely and lowered his eyes.  

"Do you know when he'll be back?"

"He went out to the opera house a few hours ago to see the new Bing Crosby picture.  I don't think he was taking anyone, so he'll probably come straight home."

BJ wasn't sure which of his questions Dr. Piece was answering, or if he were answering both.

There was no polite way to ask if Hawkeye spent much time with friends, or if there were a girl or girls he was seeing, so BJ opened his mouth to ask if Hawkeye watched many movies when the front door opened and suddenly Hawkeye was standing there. He pulled off his hat and his winter scarf, staring into the room.

He looked expressionlessly at BJ for a moment-- probably working to process the cognitive dissonance of seeing his war-time friend in his living room, next to his father, in his placid hometown.  He looked the same as ever: a little scruffy and pinched, exhausted but somehow full of life.  It felt like it had been a few minutes since BJ had seen him last, rather than a year and a half.

When Hawkeye spoke, his face was still blank, but his voice was a perfect imitation of exasperated. 

"Dad, how many times have I told you to stop ordering from the doctor catalogue?"

BJ stood.  "I can be returned for a full refund."

"It doesn't matter," said Hawkeye with a mock sigh.  The pithy retort spilled out of his mouth, and suddenly BJ felt like a fool.  Colonel Potter had always been right-- every single bad idea that BJ and Hawkeye had ever had, and the Colonel had always told them, and he had always been right.  Hawkeye shook his head playfully.  "We can't afford the postage."

 

*

 

Dr. Pierce excused himself shortly thereafter, lifting himself out of his chair and gravely announcing that one of them would need to rinse out the percolator if they wanted coffee in the morning. 

Hawkeye tugged off his gloves and coat, and he started talking about  _White Christmas_ , the movie he'd just seen, and how Bing Crosby was the pretty face but Danny Kaye was the real star.  He sank into the chair his father had vacated and sung a few lines from the title song, and went right from that to teasing BJ about the thick blanket of snow on the ground.  BJ let the familiar sound of Hawkeye's carrying-on wash over him.  They exchanged a few words about the weather in California, but Hawkeye didn't ask about BJ's life or family.

Abruptly, Hawkeye pushed himself to his feet.  "Anyway, this movie, we can go see it tomorrow."

BJ frowned, looking up at his friend.  "The movie you just watched?"

Hawkeye grinned cheekily and said, "Twice as nice," but as soon as his eyes left BJ's face his expression became shuttered and thoughtful, chasing his own thoughts, rolling something over.

He hovered in the middle of the living room for a moment.  BJ put his hands on the arms of his chair, unsure of himself.  After a silence, looking meditatively at the floor, Hawkeye said, "Did Dad say anything to you?"  _About me_  was left unspoken. 

It wasn't like Hawkeye to be private-- he smothered his traumas as savagely as anyone, but he was too unruly, too social and demonstrative, to have secrets.  But whatever Hawkeye was asking about was the thing not being said in Hawkeye's unwritten letters. 

BJ shook his head.  "Just to rinse out the percolator."

 

*

 

The next morning, BJ woke to the sound of shorebirds.  Outside his window he could see the long blue and grey slices of ocean and the sky and the snowy yard, stacked on top of each other, and curves of pink in the surf as it rolled up under the early morning sun. Sitting up in Hawkeye's guest bed, he felt stranger than he'd expected to feel.  Like he'd stumbled backward and forward at the same time: not at home but not at war; some place between them.

BJ washed up in the bathroom and then joined Hawkeye and his father for breakfast.  They sat around a small table.  Hawkeye dropped maple sausages onto their plates from a skillet and talked about one of Dr. Pierce's patients while Dr. Pierce sipped his coffee.  

During the war, BJ had imagined Dr. Pierce as an older Hawkeye-- lecherous and frenetic, only with more grey hairs-- and of course he'd only ever heard Dr. Pierce's letters in Hawkeye's voice, with Hawkeye's animated inflections.  But now he could see how it really was: Dr. Pierce's affection was evident, but Hawkeye did most of the moving and most of the talking.  He probably took after his mother, BJ realized.  He and his father had an equilibrium that had probably sealed itself in the aftermath of her death-- Hawkeye's fast wit against his father's composure; Hawkeye the entertainer bounding around his father, bringing life to Dr. Pierce's great, genial, comprehending silence. 

After breakfast, Dr. Pierce left for work, and Hawkeye announced that he was taking BJ into town.

It wasn't clear what Hawkeye normally did with his days, but nobody was volunteering that information, and BJ wasn't going to ask.  BJ had four days before flying back to San Francisco, and it was possible that he would return with no more knowledge of Hawkeye's life than he'd had before.  Another unanswered letter, only in person.

They walked side by side down the road, BJ bundled up in a coat and hat thicker than the ones he'd brought.  The late morning sunlight shone against the blankets of snow on either side of them and against the stark rows of birch trees.

"It's beautiful here," BJ said, smiling at Hawkeye.

"Oh sure, if you like that whole postcard thing," Hawkeye said, but he was smiling wryly at the ground. 

He described a nearby creek where his cousin took photographs that were published in a magazine, and then he talked about magazines, and then about his cousin.  They passed a snow-covered log cabin with smoke coming out of the chimney, and Hawkeye talked about the old lobster fisherman who lived there.  BJ had heard most of these stories before.  It was a strange experience, watching Crabapple Cove unfold around him while Hawkeye told the same old anecdotes.  It was strange to see Hawkeye in his native habitat.  Against a background of white, he spoke with the same old speech patterns: the sharp punctuations when he was delivering a line compared to the virtual tonelessness when he was talking quietly.

Hawkeye's conversation died down as they entered the town. 

Crabapple Cove was a picturesque Main Street-type town leading into a network of wharfs--  flatter and more compact than Mill Valley; filled with the hanging signs and contraptions of an old fishing village but with a Yankee tidiness.   

They stopped outside of a cafe, even though they'd eaten recently. Hawkeye looked at the closed door for a moment, face pinched, hands dug into his coat pockets, before nodding further down the street.  That happened a couple of times-- Hawkeye leading them to some establishment, possibly out of habit, possibly because he thought he might introduce BJ to someone, but then changing his mind. 

They ended up walking listlessly around the square.  BJ picked up the slack in conversation and talked about his family and his practice and the 4077th reunion he'd attended over the summer.  Hawkeye listened and nodded.  His eyes kept catching on the other man.  As strange as it was for BJ to be touring Crabapple Cove, it must have been stranger for Hawkeye, walking around his hometown with his Korea buddy.  He associated BJ with war, with trauma, but also with relief.

 

*

 

The opera house was on the north side of the town.  It was an old red brick building from the 1880s with an elaborate lit marquee that looked out of place surrounded by quaint storefronts and fabric awnings.   They had forty minutes until the matinee showing of  _White Christmas_ , so Hawkeye led BJ to a nearby package store and bought a bottle of gin and a bottle of vermouth.  "For the cold," Hawkeye said buoyantly  to the cashier, but that was the only thing he said to him.

They found a secluded bench, and Hawkeye opened both bottles.  He took a sip of gin and then handed the bottle to BJ.

"You know, sitting indoors is even better for the cold," BJ noted, but he was smiling.  He took a small sip of gin while Hawkeye brought the bottle of vermouth to his mouth.

"I thought you liked the scenery, Beej," Hawkeye said, swallowing with a grimace.  "You can get the indoor experience anywhere."

They drank without talking, alternating bottles.

After several minutes, Hawkeye peered down at the gin label in his hand and said, "Did you know the guy who wrote  _Stuart Little_  called martinis 'the elixir of quietude'?"

BJ screwed the cap back onto the bottle of vermouth and set it in the snow at his feet.  "Are you okay?" he asked.

Hawkeye made a soft noise of disgust.  "What a question.  Who's okay?  Did you read the paper today?  Nobody's okay.  That was today's headline: _PARADE CANCELLED, NOBODY OKAY_." 

BJ waited patiently, face turned to the pavement. 

After a moment, Hawkeye said, less animatedly, "Who wants to talk about being okay?"

"Interpretative dance?" said BJ, still looking down.  A corner of his mouth curled mirthlessly.  It was too easy to fall into their old patterns of exchange.  Always ready to follow Hawkeye wherever he was going; trusting his integrity, his good intentions, his demented genius.  Still trusting them. 

"No, I'm not as young as I once was, I've lost my leotard figure. But I'm working on a series of haiku."

BJ bobbed his head in agreement.  "Let's hear one."

Hawkeye huffed a laugh. 

Even with his head bowed, BJ could see the other man lift his hand and count syllables against his fingers.  Always, even when he'd been at his craziest, at his most wrecked, Hawkeye was never too far away from his inventiveness.  He was a machine that processed suffering and turned it into energy-- physical energy that became romance, mental energy that became pranks and conversation, emotional energy that became empathy. 

"Great to see you, Beej," he said haltingly, tapping the syllables on his fingertips.  "I'm not cracking up again, if that's what you think."

BJ grinned.  "Not bad.  And I know you're not cracking up.  You're a lot more talkative when you're cracking up."  In his peripheral vision, he could see Hawkeye look over at him. 

The truth was, after four long years of war, Hawkeye was an expert at cracking up.  Cracking up he could deal with.  Sidney was gone, but his voice was still there, inside Hawkeye's head, along with his own father's quiet wisdom.  But he wasn't cracking up.  He was just different.  Something had happened.

Hawkeye looked back out over the street and said, in a subdued version of his Groucho Marx voice, "There's something corrupt going on around my pants, and I just can't seem to locate it."

In the silence that followed, wet flecks of snow began to fall.  Their breathing billowed in the cold air. 

They sat for a long time, staring out onto the street, Hawkeye's mouth slightly pursed, something stillborn ready to spill out.

"Peg's having another baby," BJ said, at last.  "We're naming him Benjamin."

Hawkeye's eyes slid closed.  He bowed his head, listing toward the hand that BJ rested on his shoulder.  "Thank you," he said.

 

 

*

 

Hawkeye had been right about Danny Kaye being the star of  _ White Christmas _ .  BJ wasn't a big fan of musicals, nor of army scenes in movies, but he liked the opulent Christmas scenery and the easy good humor between Kaye and Crosby.

In the movie, there was an old general who found himself unhappy in peacetime, discontent and confused, at loose ends, moving away from his usefulness, he thought-- and throughout the film he expected a letter that would call him back to service.  He opened each letter with excitement before wilting with disappointment.  The letters he got were filled with social talk, family news, nostalgia, friendship-- but not clarity.  It was hard for BJ not to think about his own letters to Hawkeye every time the general's face fell.

But about twenty minutes into the film, Hawkeye reached over in the dark theater and took hold of BJ's sleeve and held it tightly for the remainder of the film. They both kept laughing in all the right places, even after BJ set his own warm hand over top of Hawkeye's.

When Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby did a number in half-drag, wearing tiaras and sashes, Hawkeye leaned close and whispered, "Those calves remind you of anybody?"  He used his free hand to point at the screen, the fingers of his other hand still curled in BJ's shirt.

 

 

 


End file.
